1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to multichannel audio systems and methods, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for deriving multichannel audio signals from a monaural or stereo audio signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Monaural sound was the original audio recording and playback method invented by Edison in 1877. This method was subsequently replaced by stereo or two channel recording and playback, which has become the standard audio presentation format. Stereo provided a broader canvas on which to paint an audio experience. Now it has been recognized that audio presentation in more than two channels can provide an even broader canvas for painting audio experiences. The exploitation of multichannel presentation has taken two routes. The most direct and obvious has been to simply provide more record and playback channels directly; the other has been to provide various matrix methods which create multiple channels, usually from a stereo (two channel) recording. The first method requires more recording channels and hence bandwidth or storage capacity. This is generally not available because of intrinsic bandwidth or data rate limitations of existing distribution means. For digital audio representations, data compression methods can reduce the amount of data required to represent audio signals and hence make it more practical, but these methods are incompatible with normal stereo presentation and current hardware and software formats.
Matrix methods are described in Dressler, “Dolby Pro Logic Surround Decoder—Principles of Operation” (http://www.dolby.com/ht/ds&pl/whtppr.html); Waller, Jr., “The Circle Surround® Audio Surround Systems”, Rocktron Corp. White Paper; and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,746,792, 3,959,590, 5,319,713 and 5,333,201. While matrix methods are reasonably compatible with existing stereo hardware and software, they compromise the performance of the stereo or multichannel presentations, or both, their multichannel performance is severely limited compared to a true discrete multichannel presentation, and the matrixing is generally uncontrolled.